No quick fix for Scofieldtown

Published 6:00 pm, Friday, October 2, 2009

Let's play a game of "What If?"

What if the city of Stamford 25 years ago had acted on warnings about potential health dangers posed by the former dump that lurks beneath Scofieldtown Park?

Would poison currently be contaminating wells that supply water to houses in the area surrounding the park? Would today's officials be scrambling to deal with a problem that seems to grow worse by the day? Residents there have reported several cases of cancer and other illnesses. Would some of those people have been spared their suffering?

Of course, it's impossible to say. We can't turn back time and see what an alternate reality would be had people in power done their jobs.

Related Stories

What we can do is switch the question to a more important one: "What now?"

Do we learn from the past and clean up Scofieldtown once and for all, or do just enough for the immediate future and let the next generation worry about even worse consequences 25 years down the road?

Current city officials, who in the most recent crisis at Scofieldtown have shown the urgency of their predecessors, say they will look into remediation once the pressing emergency is dealt with. They will vote this week on a $2 million plan to attach homes near Scofieldtown Park to water lines; it's possible the plan will be expanded in the future.

A longer-term approach is by no means assured. In August, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a decision that removal action at the site is "not appropriate at this time." The agency - which apparently regards the "Protection" part of its name as more guideline than rule - said the city and state were providing an appropriate response. Keep in mind the response at that time consisted of partial testing, helping to get some homes fit with filters and formulating a plan to pass out bottled water in certain neighborhoods.

But why expect the EPA to change now? Scofieldtown represents a decades-long failure of city, state and federal government to protect citizens. Time and again over the past quarter-century there have been serious indications of problems there, and precious little has been done.

When in 1984, six years after Love Canal, city Rep. Barbara McInerney called for monitoring at the site, she was ignored. Two years later, barrels containing carcinogens and heavy metals began surfacing. The city was ordered to remove the barrels, and it took out 17 by 1988. The next year it took out 70 more. There are still barrels in the soil there. We don't claim to know what they contain.

Also in 1988, a city study found a dozen potentially harmful substances in the soil, but officials claimed not at levels that posed a threat. In 1996, water samples collected from three residences found carcinogens and metals. It appears testing ended there. In the most recent occurrence, The EPA in December announced it had found PCBs and other harmful materials in the soil of the park. But it took the city five months to close the park, and longer to begin testing wells at nearby homes.

That is just a sampling of a history that shows a disturbing pattern of government inaction. Tests have repeatedly found poisons from the landfill present in soil, surface water and house wells, but the sources of those poisons have not been removed.

Which leaves Stamford with a basic question, as simple as "What if?" or "What now?" Will government break the pattern and finally do what's right and clean up the Scofieldtown site, or will it take care of the short term and let the problem continue?

Bob Boucher, a neighbor whose well is less than half a mile away, recently walked through the Scofieldtown woods. At one point he stopped and eyed a pond apparently slick with chemicals. At another he kicked the soil to reveal a drum.